Elementary Season 6 Episode 13 Review: Breathe

The victim was actually an assassin, and he managed to be his own killer as well. No wonder Sherlock had to go back in time four years to solve this one.

Viewers even got to learn about a particularly obscure occupation, relocation expert, a person who helps people smoothly transition to a new area.

No wonder Leland Frisk could freelance as a contract killer for decades. He could travel anywhere without suspicion under the guise of a relocation expert.

You have to wonder how a trained assassin and wine snob wouldn't notice the scent of almonds indicating that the presence of cyanide in his dessert wine. That should have been a clue that something was amiss.

It was an exciting twist to this episode, as the killer was revealed fairly early on, and Sherlock and company spent the rest of the time proving he was the killer. Well, kinda sorta.

Cal Medina, yet another memorable villain, played by Joaquim de Almeida, deserved to be guilty of something. He was that sort of pharmaceutical exec who held those suffering from orphan diseases up for ransom by raising drug prices to obscene levels.

The trouble was that Medina had an alibi, a female politician who he had brought already, and no evidence pointed to him, other than his information being missing from Frisk's files.

So Sherlock started looking for suspicious deaths of people involved with orphan diseases in recent years. Circuitous but correct logic, it turned out.

It didn't take him long to find a researcher closing in on a cheaper drug for cystic fibrosis who died suddenly, supposedly of asphyxiation. But Sherlock determined he had gotten suffocated instead.

The murder victim was found. The only problem was that Frisk didn't kill the researcher.

Frisk's loyal secretary Sherry had a son who required Medina's costly cystic fibrosis drug. Frisk figured out that if Medina were out of the picture, his board would lower the price of the drug, making it affordable for more sufferers of that condition.

The assassin couldn't reach Medina to kill him, and he couldn't find the killer Medina used to kill the researcher. As the FBI was closing in on Frisk, he went to a drastic measure: killing himself and framing Medina for the crime.

Once Sherlock and Joan had figured that out, Sherlock uses Frisk's research to create a trap to flush out the researcher's killer, using confidential informants to spread the word that Medina was about to turn in the killer.

It was another ingenious plan of Sherlock's that worked wonderfully, although Marcus and the FBI agent certainly looked askance at him when he proposed it.

Next, let's look at the other major puzzler of this episode: Is Sherlock ever going to become Uncle Detective?

Joan is usually very meticulous in her research. I understand that she would need a lawyer specializing in adoptions, but this Gary couldn't have come highly recommended. Maybe the adoption agency recommended him, although I can't see why.

He mishandled two appointments, and Joan got dropped by the agency. And his response is "Oh, well. You can just start over. You're in no hurry." Just what an aging would-be mom wants to hear.

So Gary established his jackass credentials pretty early.

Joan seemed quite conflicted about Sherlock's role in her would-be child's life.

It's her decision to seek a child, and she doesn't want Sherlock to feel obligated in any way.

She has been with him how long, and she doesn't know that he's going to jump in with both feet?

She didn't want him going nuclear on Gary and asked him nicely to leave it alone, which he agreed to do.